#I’m reading about early wisconsin stations rn can you tell lmao

[gayabeilles]

idk I would definitely agree that the precedent is there for hell to already have established radio stations by the time Al died—as you’ve mentioned, even with a bit of a lag in hellish technology, the timeline is still very accommodating. for a little more context, the oldest stations (it’s a matter of some debate which is actually The Oldest lol) began regular broadcasting in the mid 1910s; one of those, 9XM (based out of my current institution!), started broadcasting weather reports in morse code in 1915 as a public service. during ww1 all civilian radio use was banned, only lifted in october of 1919; 9XM resumed their weather reports but it took until 1921 to start doing audio broadcasts since they were making their own radio tubes, glassblowing them and everything. at that point, they added music (live and recorded) to their schedule, soon followed by educational programs (e.g. School/College of the Air and Chapter A Day) and reports on university sports and news. so, even by the early to mid 20s, there’s quite a bit of variety already very well established.

also touching on the titanic thing—there is a popular (and almost certainly false) story that on the mainland the first person who happened to pick up the distress call was none other than one young David Sarnoff, who went on to become the president of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA). this is thought to be highly embellished by Sarnoff himself, though, who told the tale some eleven years after the event. however, he did help to coordinate rescue efforts from the Wanamaker station shortly after, and his team released the names of the survivors. regardless of the veracity of the story, though, he was an early proponent of radio as a medium of entertainment rather than communication, and was one of the early giants of the field.

speaking of Sarnoff, actually, he’s the reason for the delay in frequency modulation really being available to the public until the 40s—the notorious rivalry with Armstrong really developed as Sarnoff started getting interested in more lucrative ventures (television) since at their hearts the former was an inventor seeking to improve the existing medium and the latter was an entrepreneur. funnily enough, Armstrong invented his FM circuit in 1933, which drastically reduced the static that plagues AM. Sarnoff was by then already pursuing commercializing early television sets, and engaged Armstrong in a fierce and drawn-out legal battle because he was worried his own AM-based empire at RCA would be swept out from under him (plus he used the FCC to effectively steal FM from Armstrong for his own use). this is some years beyond what y’all are talking about, but my point here is just to add that Al would (at minimum for the first decade or so) be exclusively broadcasting in AM, though he might’ve made the transition to FM later on as it did have a remarkable improvement in reception (although to my knowledge AM remained dominant until the 70s). hope there weren’t any storms down in wrath during his shows lol or else even screams could just be drowned out by static.

how long do we think it took for alastor to come clean about being the radio demon. months? years? how long was this man terrorizing everyone anonymously before he finally caved to the desire to be recognized for his hard work